DC-DC converters transfer power from a DC electrical input source to a load by transferring buckets of energy between windings of an isolation transformer. The DC output voltage delivered to the load is controlled by adjusting the timing of internal power switching elements (e.g., by controlling the converter switching frequency and/or the switch duty cycle and/or the phase of switches). As defined herein, the functions of a “DC-DC converter” comprise: a) isolation between the input source and the load; b) conversion of an input voltage to an output voltage; and c) regulation of the output voltage. DC-DC converters may be viewed as a subset of a broad class of switching power converters, referred to as “switching regulators,” which convert power from an input source to a load by processing energy through intermediate storage in reactive elements. As defined herein, the functions of a “Switching Regulator” comprise: a) conversion of an input voltage to an output voltage, and b) regulation of the output voltage. If the required output voltage is essentially a positive or negative integer (or rational) multiple of the input voltage, the conversion function may also be efficiently performed by a capacitive “Charge Pump,” which transfers energy by adding and subtracting charge from capacitors.
The introduction of commercial DC-DC converters capable of efficiently switching at high frequencies (e.g., 1 MHz) has brought about significant miniaturization of the DC-DC converter function. The reduction in switching losses made possible by the invention, in the early 1980's, of zero current switching (“ZCS”) and zero voltage switching (“ZVS”) power conversion topologies, led to an increase in converter operating frequency that translated into a commensurate breakthrough in power density. The power density of DC-DC converters jumped from about 1 Watt/cubic inch to over 20 Watts/cubic inch. The reduction of DC-DC converter volume per unit of power delivered, and the corresponding reduction in DC-DC converter weight, created many new opportunities for the deployment of DC-DC converters and enabled the development of more advanced power systems and power system architectures for electronic products and systems. These products and systems have also benefited from advances in power density and efficiency of commercial Switching Regulators and Charge Pumps.
High frequency DC-DC converters have been packaged to provide flexibility in mechanical mounting and thermal management. A typical DC-DC converter (FIG. 1) is an enclosed assembly 10 comprising a metal surface 12 for extracting heat and connection pins 13 for connecting the converter to the source and the load. Contemporary DC-DC converters, commercially available from many vendors, offer power densities up to 100 Watts per cubic inch and the height of the overall assembly, exclusive of the pins, is typically 0.5 inch.
It is known that there is a tradeoff between DC-DC converter operating efficiency and power density on the one hand, and the range of input voltages over which the converter is designed to operate on the other. Narrower input voltage operating ranges may allow for more efficient converters and higher power densities. It is also known that, for a given level of power delivery, the efficiency of a power converter typically decreases with decreasing output voltage. For example, a converter delivering 2V at 100 Amperes (100 Watts) will typically exhibit higher losses than a converter delivering 5V at 20 Amperes (100 Watts).
Certain electronic systems contain a multiplicity of subsystems on printed circuit boards (“PCBs”), closely spaced and interconnected within an enclosure or rack, each PCB requiring a complement of voltages suitably adapted to the unique power requirements of the circuitry on the PCB. Prior to the availability of high density and low profile (0.5 inch tall) DC-DC converters, most such systems relied on a “centralized power architecture” (“CPA”). In the CPA architecture, the various well-regulated voltages required by the PCBs (e.g., 2V, 5V, 12V) are generated in a centralized power supply and bussed around the system for delivery to each of the PCB subassemblies. With the CPA architecture, high currents at relatively low voltages need to be delivered over substantial distances and the management of power losses and voltage drops throughout the system is difficult and costly. The advent of high-density DC-DC converters enabled a migration from the CPA to a “distributed power architecture” (“DPA”). In the DPA architecture, these problems are overcome by bussing a relatively higher, less well-regulated, voltage around the system (e.g., 300V, 48V, 24V) to provide input power to DC-DC converters on the PCBs, which perform the functions of isolation, voltage conversion and regulation at the point-of-load. In addition to simplifying power distribution, the DPA provides system design flexibility, since each subsystem can be provided with DC-DC converters which deliver whatever voltages are needed without requiring modifications to a centralized power supply or distribution system. System design flexibility is further enhanced by the availability of high density Switching Regulators and Charge Pumps.
The DPA architecture is discussed in Tabisz et al, “Present and Future of Distributed Power Systems,” APEC '92 Conference Proceedings, 1992, pp. 11–18; in Mweene et al, A High-Efficiency 1.5 kW, 390–50V Half-Bridge Converter Operated at 100% Duty Ratio,” APEC '92 Conference Proceedings, 1992, pp. 723–730; in Choi et al, “Dynamics and Control of DC-to-DC Converters Driving Other Converters Downstream,” IEEE Transactions on Circuits and Systems—I: Fundamental Theory and Applications, October 1999, pp. 1240–1248; and in Lee et al, “Topologies and Design Considerations for Distributed Power System Applications,” Proceedings of the IEEE, June 2001, pp. 939–950.
Non-resonant full-bridge, half-bridge, and push-pull DC-to-DC transformer topologies are known. See e.g. Severns and Bloom, “Modern DC-to-DC Switchmode Power Conversion Circuits,” ISBN 0-442-21396-4, pp. 78–111. Series, parallel, and other resonant forms of switching power converters are also known. See e.g., Steigerwald, “A Comparison of Half-Bridge Resonant Converter Topologies,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 2, No. 2, April 1988. Variable frequency, series resonant, half-bridge converters for operation from an input voltage source are described in Baker, “High Frequency Power Conversion With FET-Controlled Resonant Charge Transfer,” PCI Proceedings, April 1983, and in Nerone, U.S. Pat. No. 4,648,017. Half-bridge, single-stage, ZVS, multi-resonant, variable frequency converters, which operate from an input voltage source are shown in Tabisz et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,841,220 and Tabisz et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,860,184. A variable frequency, full-bridge, resonant converter, in which an inductor is interposed between the input source and the resonant converter is described in Divan, “Design Considerations for Very High Frequency Resonant Mode DC/DC Converters,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. PE-2, No. 1, January, 1987. A variable frequency, ZVS, half-bridge LLC series resonant converter is described in Bo Yang et al, “LLC Resonant Converter for Front End DC-DC Conversion,” CPES Seminar 2001, Blacksburg, Va., April 2001. Analysis and simulation of a “Low Q” half-bridge series resonant converter, wherein the term “Low Q” refers to operation at light load, is described in Bo Yang et al, “Low Q Characteristic of Series Resonant Converter and Its Application,” CPES Seminar 2001, Blacksburg, Va., April 2001.
Fixed-frequency half-bridge and full-bridge resonant converters are also known in which output voltage control is achieved by controlling the relative timing of switches. A half-bridge, single-stage, ZVS, multi-resonant, fixed-frequency converter that operates from an input voltage source is shown in Jovanovic et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,931,716. A full-bridge, single-stage, ZVS, resonant, fixed-frequency converter that operates from an input voltage source is shown in Henze et al, U.S. Pat. No. 4,855,888.
A full-bridge, single-stage, ZCS, series-resonant, fixed-frequency converter, operating at a frequency equal to the characteristic resonant frequency of the converter, is shown in Palz, “Stromversorgung von Satelliten—Wanderfeldrohren hoher Leistung” (“Power Supply for Satellites—High Capacity Traveling-Wave Tubes”), Siemens Zeitschrift, Vol. 48, 1974, pp. 840–846. Half and full-bridge, single-stage, ZVS, resonant, converters, for powering fluorescent tubes are shown in Nalbant, U.S. Pat. No. 5,615,093.
A DC-to-DC Transformer offered for sale by SynQor, Hudson, Mass., USA, called a “BusQor™ Bus Converter,” that converts a regulated 48VDC input to a 12 VDC output at a power level of 240 Watts and that can be paralleled with other similar converters for increased output power delivery, and that is packaged in a quarter brick format, is described in data sheet “Preliminary Tech Spec, Narrow Input, Isolated DC/DC Bus Converter,” SynQor Document No. 005-2BQ512J, Rev. 7, August, 2002.
The art of resonant power conversion, including operation below or above resonant frequency, utilizing either ZCS or ZVS control techniques and allowing the resonant cycle to be either completed or purposely interrupted, is summarized in Chapter 19 of Erickson and Maksimovic, “Fundamentals of Power Electronics,” 2nd Edition, Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001.
Cascaded converters, in which a first converter is controlled to generate a voltage or current, which serves as the source of input power for a DC-to-DC transformer stage, are known. A discussion of canonical forms of cascaded converters is given in Severns and Bloom, ibid, at, e.g., pp. 114–117, 136–139. Baker, ibid, discusses the use of a voltage pre-regulator cascaded with a half-bridge, resonant, variable-frequency converter. Jones, U.S. Pat. No. 4,533,986 shows a continuous-mode PWM boost converter cascaded with both PWM converters and FM resonant half-bridge converters for improving holdup time and improving the power factor presented to an AC input source. A zero-voltage transition, current-fed, full-bridge PWM converter, comprising a PWM boost converter delivering a controlled current to a PWM, full-bridge converter, is shown in Hua et al, “Novel Zero-Voltage Transition PWM Converters,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 9, No. 2, March, 1994, p. 605. Stuart, U.S. Pat. No. 4,853,832, shows a full-bridge series-resonant converter cascaded with a series-resonant DC-to-DC transformer stage for providing AC bus power to distributed rectified loads. A half-bridge PWM DC-to-DC transformer stage for use in providing input power to point-of-load DC—DC converters in a DPA is described in Mweene et al, ibid. Schlecht, U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,999,417 and 6,222,742 shows DC-DC converters which incorporate a DC-to-DC transformer stage cascaded with a switching regulator. Vinciarelli, “Buck-Boost DC-DC Switching Power Conversion,” U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/214,859, filed Aug. 8, 2002, assigned to the same assignee as this application and incorporated by reference, discloses a new, high efficiency, ZVS buck-boost converter topology and shows a front-end converter comprising the disclosed topology cascaded with a DC-DC converter and a DC-to-DC transformer.
A power distribution architecture proposed by Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, Calif., USA, called NPSA (“New Power Supply Architecture”), is described by Colson in “Intel Platform Solutions,” Issue 23, September, 1999, and by Reynolds in “Intel Development Forum Highlights: Fall 1999,” published by Gartner, Dataquest, November, 1999. NPSA comprises a front-end converter which generates a 30 VAC, 1 MHz, distribution bus for delivery to regulating AC-DC converters located near distributed loads. A power distribution architecture comprising a front-end converter which generates a 12 VDC distribution bus for use by point-of-load isolated and non-isolated converters is described briefly in “Tiny Titans: Choose ‘Em and Use ‘Em With Care,” EDN magazine, May 2, 2002, p. 48. A power distribution architecture comprising a front-end isolated bus converter which generates an unregulated 12 VDC distribution bus for use by point-of-load non-isolated regulating DC-DC converters is described in “Distributed Power Moves To Intermediate Voltage Bus,” Electronic Design magazine, Sep. 16, 2002, p. 55.
The accepted approach for delivering power to future generation microprocessors revolves around power conversion topologies and control techniques that support high-bandwidth performance under closed-loop control. The strategy is to keep the voltage at the microprocessor within an allowable range under rapid transitions in the current drawn by the microprocessor by: a) providing adequate bypass capacitance at the point-of-load to absorb the rate of change of current within a time scale shorter than the response time of the upstream power converter and b) providing a converter having a very fast closed loop response to limit the amount of point-of-load capacitance that is needed.
This approach relies upon the “multiphase buck topology” employing N buck converters operating in parallel, locked at the highest practical frequency and “interleaved” by a phase equal to 360/N. Interleaving provides faster transient response by allowing a reduction in the value of the inductance in series with the output of each buck stage (thus increasing the slew rate of current) and by allowing sampling of the output error voltage at N times the base frequency (thus extending the Nyquist limit for closed loop stability to a fraction of the multiplied frequency as opposed to the base frequency). As the microprocessor current and current rate of change keeps growing with every generation of microprocessor, more and more phases are added to keep up with it. And control methods to extract the most in terms of close loop bandwidth are being developed.
An example of this microprocessor power paradigm (using double-edge modulation to extract closed-loop bandwidth in the 1.5 MHz range from a system consisting of 8 interleaved buck converters each operating at 1 MHz) is discussed in “New Control Method Boosts Multiphase Bandwidth,” Paul Harriman, Power Electronics, January 2003, pp. 36–45.
A series resonant converter in which ZVS is accomplished by exploiting the flow of magnetizing current in a transformer, or in an inductor connected in parallel with the primary winding of a transformer, is described in Ferreira, U.S. Pat. No. 5,448,467.
Low-loss gate drivers for driving capacitive gate terminals of power switching devices are described in Yao et al, “A Novel Resonant Gate Driver for High Frequency Synchronous Buck Converters,” IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, Vol. 17, No. 2, March 2002 and in Fisher et al, U.S. Pat. No. 5,179,512, in Steigerwald, U.S. Pat. No. 5,514,921 and Schlecht, ibid.
A variety of isolated power conversion topologies are compared for use as voltage regulator modules (“VRM”) in Ye et al, “Investigation of Topology Candidates for 48V VRM,” 2002 APEC Conference. Projected trends in performance requirements for VRMs and a proposed technology roadmap for achieving those requirements are summarized in Stanford, “New Processors Will Require New Powering Technologies,” Power Electronics Technology magazine, February 2002.
Modulating the channel resistance of a MOSFET synchronous rectifier switch as a means of regulating an output voltage of a switching power converter is described in Mullett et al, U.S. Pat. No. 6,330,169 B2.